Famous Modern Ghost Stories eBook

But then when I got up, she was not where my arms
went; she was down the stair again, just ahead of
me. I followed her. I was tottering and dizzy
and full of pain. I tried to catch up with her
in the dark of the store-room, but she was too quick
for me, sir, always a little too quick for me.
Oh, she was cruel to me, sir. I kept bumping against
things, hurting myself still worse, and it was cold
and wet and a horrible noise all the while, sir; and
then, sir, I found the door was open, and a sea had
parted the hinges.

I don’t know how it all went, sir. I’d
tell you if I could, but it’s all so blurred—­sometimes
it seems more like a dream. I couldn’t find
her any more; I couldn’t hear her; I went all
over, everywhere. Once, I remember, I found myself
hanging out of that door between the davits, looking
down into those big black seas and crying like a baby.
It’s all riddles and blur. I can’t
seem to tell you much, sir. It was all—­all—­I
don’t know.

I was talking to somebody else—­not her.
It was the Inspector. I hardly knew it was the
Inspector. His face was as gray as a blanket,
and his eyes were bloodshot, and his lips were twisted.
His left wrist hung down, awkward. It was broken
coming aboard the Light in that sea. Yes, we
were in the living-room. Yes, sir, it was daylight—­gray
daylight. I tell you, sir, the man looked crazy
to me. He was waving his good arm toward the
weather windows, and what he was saying, over and over,
was this:

“Look what you done, damn you! Look
what you done!”

And what I was saying was this:

“I’ve lost her!”

I didn’t pay any attention to him, nor him to
me. By and by he did, though. He stopped
his talking all of a sudden, and his eyes looked like
the devil’s eyes. He put them up close to
mine. He grabbed my arm with his good hand, and
I cried, I was so weak.

“Johnson,” said he, “is that it?
By the living God—­if you got a woman out
here, Johnson!”

“No,” said I. “I’ve lost
her.”

“What do you mean—­lost her?”

“It was dark,” said I—­and it’s
funny how my head was clearing up—­“and
the door was open—­the store-room door—­and
I was after her—­and I guess she stumbled,
maybe—­and I lost her.”

“Johnson,” said he, “what do you
mean? You sound crazy—­downright crazy.
Who?”

“Her,” said I. “Fedderson’s
wife.”

“Who?”

“Her,” said I. And with that he gave my
arm another jerk.

“Listen,” said he, like a tiger.
“Don’t try that on me. It won’t
do any good—­that kind of lies—­not
where you’re going to. Fedderson
and his wife, too—­the both of ’em’s
drowned deader ’n a door-nail.”

“I know,” said I, nodding my head.
I was so calm it made him wild.

“You’re crazy! Crazy as a loon, Johnson!”
And he was chewing his lip red. “I know,
because it was me that found the old man laying on
Back Water Flats yesterday morning—­me!
And she’d been with him in the boat, too, because
he had a piece of her jacket tore off, tangled in his
arm.”